Went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum today.

[GoneOffShore]

A very disturbing place on so many levels.

Hitler screwed over the Polish people and then Roosevelt and Churchill bowed to Stalin's demands at the end of the war and essentially fucked Eastern Europe.

That's a very simplistic view, but pretty much what happened from what I saw today.

And from our hotel room we can see a little piece of the ghetto wall, one of the few pieces still standing.

Not proud of our history right now.

[Aristus]

1. It's a myth that Roosevelt and Churchill let Stalin "have" Poland.

The Russians swept through Poland on their way to Berlin, spending Russian blood the whole way. Whatever their aims or designs for a post-war Eastern Europe, nobody handed it to them. They fought for it.

Roosevelt and Churchill no more "handed" Poland to Stalin than Stalin could have "handed" France to the Western Allies.

Having said that, yes, I imagine the museum was moving and horrifying.

[Taverner]

5. Stalin and Beria were paranoid to the point of psychosis at that time

Both of each other, their allies and their own people

They were also afraid of Germany - they had just defeated them, but knew from history Germany always rises and comes back.

It's a lot more complicated than that - keep in mind the USSR wanted a buffer around Germany. If you see the iron curtain from them, it pretty much wraps around Germany. They tried to make Austria a Soviet state as well.

Truth be told, after the war the USSR had no money, no army nothing. Later on they created COMECON which, unlike Comic-Con, was a huge failure.

Post WWII Europe is truly one of the strangest periods in world history.

Within 20 years, the cold war would be front and center.

And two men would prevent WWIII. Those men? JFK and Nikita Khrushchev.

Both paid high prices for preventing that war.

[sarge43]

2. So, in May 1945 how would you have shifted the Soviet army out of Eastern Europe?

Keeping in mind that at the time the Allied forces were facing a potential invasion of mainland Japan, a battle that would have made Stalingrad look like a pillow fight.

[jakeXT]

3. WW3

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

[sarge43]

6. Four to one, two to one

Sheer numbers aren't everything, but reasonable to assume it would not have ended well.

It would have been another Thirty Years War with a side of WWI -- a fair share of Europe a waste land.

[jakeXT]

4. "We apologize for living."

One article published in the Warsaw paper Gazeta Warszawska [Warsaw Gazette], which appeared during the uprising captured the attitude of the Poles at that time. It was entitled "We apologize for living." The writer pointed out that the Polish people obviously stood in the way of all their neighbors and the major powers. They hindered the Germans in their drive eastwards, the Russians in their advance to the West, and Britain and the U.S. in their alliance with Moscow. Thus, he said, the Poles had no choice but to beg the whole world’s pardon for the fact that they were alive at all. But that done, the article concluded, the Poles had done enough for good manners and now they would fight on.
http://www.poloniatoday.com/warsaw-9.html

[Progressive dog]

7. Hitler screwed the Polish people with Stalin's help

in the first place. Stalin didn't just want a buffer, he wanted an Empire.
Stalin was attacked by Hitler in June of 1941, the US did not enter the war until December when Hitler declared war on us. Somewhere more than 150,000 Polish soldiers fled to the UK and most stayed and fought with the British. Many Polish pilots fought in the battle of Britain. They became exiles from Poland after the war.
When Germany surrendered, the occupation zones were already decided. Poland was given to the Soviets, it had already been taken from the Germans by the Soviets.
The only way to have stripped Poland from Stalin would have been by force. The Soviets might have won, but there would have been lots more killed (including Polish) no matter who won.
We haven't always been right, IMO, but in this case we may have made the lesser of two evils choice.